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Choose My Adventure: No Skyrim, unfortunately
For the next six weeks, you, dear readers, get to poke me with virtual sticks and jeer as I do your bidding in an MMO of your choosing. Who am I, you ask. Some of you know me from Massively TV's livestreams, during which I like to ninja loot Karen Bryan's kills. Some of you know me from reading my Runes of Magic articles. What none of you (likely) knows is that I actively play and enjoy many of the MMOs featured here on Massively. However, there are plenty of other MMOs I've either never played or have only sampled briefly. You are going to rectify that. I tend to have a casual, laid-back style of play. You'd typically find me crafting armor rather than running a dungeon in World of Warcraft. I'd rather be exploring the countryside in Vanguard than progressing through raid content. So whether you revel in the idea of throwing me out of my comfort zone or you want to sit next to me on my extra-soft carebear couch, now's your chance to vote. I'll also be livestreaming parts of Choose My Adventure in the coming weeks. Oh yeah -- and you have until Saturday to vote!
Behind the Mask: Preparing for war
As many of you will recall, last week we talked about Champions Online's PvP and some basic information on the builds and gametypes currently available. For those of you who watched my livestream this week, I also managed to noob it up in Stronghold quite a bit (plus a game of BASH and a game of Zombies). It was quite fun; I have very little experience in Stronghold compared to other types of PvP, so it was a bit of a learning experience. I wanted to go back to PvP again this week and cover some basic tools and strategies for all types of PvP, especially the Hero Games group PvP modes. Some of the strategies aren't obvious to beginners, and others are easy to forget in the heat of battle. While everyone can agree on certain basic strategies, it's easy to get blood in the eyes and focus too heavily on depleting some hero's life bar.
Behind the Mask: The pursuit of magic
When it comes to roleplaying, I'm a huge fan of wizards and spell casters, and it has nothing to do with gameplay roles. Magic is generally unlimited in its potential; it has the power to do anything the imagination can perceive, and the freedom to choose different roles for my characters is very attractive. In the Champions universe, arcane practice is very different than its typical portrayals elsewhere. In most universes with a fantasy element, magic involves some chanting and spending some magic points or some other consumable resource (or possibly forgetting the spell in question) before the magic effect wills itself into existence. For roleplayers, this magical difference is very important. Magical spells and creatures don't follow the same rules as those present in other fiction. Champions mystics follow real-life mythology and lore -- and strangely, this makes them unique among mages in other roleplaying settings.
Behind the Mask: The Demonflame
Champions Online's second adventure pack, Demonflame, is currently available on the Test Server, and over the last couple of weeks I've done a few playthroughs at various stages of its development. Demonflame is a new take on an old organization from the Champions lore. DEMON (which is strangely not an acronym) is a magic-themed group of devil worshipers and one of the most powerful factions in the Champions universe. Prior to the adventure pack, DEMON was pretty poorly represented in CO. The villain group starred in a small series of arcs in the level 20-25 range, and the core members of DEMON's inner circle were not even given "Super Villain" status. It has been sort of a common theme for mystic roleplayers to downplay the significance of DEMON because the group is so poorly characterized. Demonflame also represents the newest surge of content for CO superheroes, and in many ways it has excelled where Serpent Lantern was lacking.
Behind the Mask: Six editions of legacy can't be all bad
Before we get into today's discussion on the merits of Champions Online's lore, I want to do a quick brief on the pet pass and the Demonflame update for those not hounding the forums. Demonflame is a little under a week away on PTS and about two weeks on live; you can get the skinny from Poz here. The pet patch is currently on PTS, and it's not bad, but it still needs some work. If you're interested at all in bashing out pets I strongly advise getting on PTS, going to the boards and dropping some feedback. A few other things have been tweaked too. This week on Behind the Mask, we're going to talk about lore. I'm not talking about the game's lore, although I'll cover some of that too. I'm talking about the book lore! I finally gave in and picked up the PDFs (you can buy them from the Hero Games website), and I browsed through a lot of the lore content. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the content in Champions Online consists of parodies of comic and MMO culture, and those elements dilute the serious and interesting lore content that is available. If you've read the lore entries that you can find throughout CO, you'll find that most of them actually sound kind of cool. Unfortunately, that lore is scattered and doesn't show a lot of the big picture. Fortunately, I blew a ton of cash on PDFs (including even the rulebooks) to get a good sense of the game's lore.
Behind the Mask: Roleplaying in a modern way
This week on Behind the Mask, I faced a startling dilemma. On the one hand, the developers have proposed the most universally disliked gameplay change ever. The issue is very troublesome, and I could probably write a pretty convincing argument on the subject. My hope is that the devs give in to the wailing voices of the playerbase begging not to implement the changes. If these changes hit the test server, Behind the Mask will be right there with the coverage, but it's important to not jump the gun too early. Instead, we're going to talk about roleplaying. Champions Online has a very unusual roleplaying culture. Unlike other MMORPGs, Champions is pretty respectful of the people that don the roleplaying hat. It is not strange to find a group of roleplayers journeying through Millenium City or one of the other hot zones for heroes. The devs understand the plights of roleplayers, and a lot of the various features that are implemented in CO have no real "value" except as roleplaying tools. Often roleplayers can be seen as "losers" or "nerds." Not so much in CO. Hit the jump, and we'll explore the place I call "IC."
Upcoming Champions Online dev chat to focus on the Hero Games
We do a lot of talking on this site (readers included) about things that could be changed or improved in the games we play, and Champions Online has been the subject of these discussions perhaps more than any other title in recent times. While some of our collective feedback must get back to the Cryptic Studios developers, one of the best ways to get through to them is by participating in their dev chats. There is one coming up at 4PM PDT this Thursday, October 8th, and the topic du jour will be the "Hero Games" PvP arenas.The main way that the devs will be taking questions is through this forum thread. They plan to go through as many of the questions posted there as they can, but the audience will get a chance to ask some follow-ups or extra questions at the end too. The IRC channel is #championsonline at irc.coldfront.net, or if you don't want to use an IRC client, there is a Java chat client available as well. So, if you think the Hero Games in Champions Online could be improved somehow, get a few questions ready (remember, the questions thread on the forums gives the highest chance of them being answered) and let your voice be heard this Thursday.
Create My Champion: Week zero
With beta and launch only a month away, I thought it would be fun to do a temporary weekly feature not unlike our popular Choose My Adventure series but for Champions Online. The difference here is this feature will focus on the character creator, power sets and travel powers. You tell me what kind of wacky character to create and I'll do my best to put it all together and snap some awesome screens!Read the details after the break.
Champions Online busts out its PvP trailer
Cryptic is churning out Champions Online videos at a faster pace as of late, between this PvP trailer and the recently released character creation walkthrough video. Although that's probably to be expected with September a mere seven weeks away. We're pretty certain that everyone in the MMO house that superheroism built are feeling the pressure as of late.Speaking of pressure, this new PvP trailer really does everything it can to make us feel it -- but in a good way. We'd say it succeeds int reassuring watchers that PvP will be exciting and dramatic in Champions Online. Our only suggestion for Cryptic would be not to stop here; keep expanding the Hero Games. It doesn't need to be crazy, but something tells us the current offering will only sate people for so long.At the end of the day, it all really depends on having a fun, balanced and rewarding experience. Here's hoping there's plenty of reason to pound our superpowered buddies in the face come the month of September. Oh, yeah, you can find the full Giant Bomb-hosted trailer after the break.
Champions Online PvP explained
In Champions Online, where everyone is supposed to be a super-powered hero, how do you explain those heroes beating the snot out of each other?Cryptic has obviously given this question some thought and just recently they revealed their plans and Champions Online Daily News has the details. There are three kinds of PvP encounters planned for launch and the whole system pays homage to the creators of Champions Online, Hero Games. The Hero Games is a system of sanctioned and unsanctioned PvP that branches into three areas: one-on-one dueling, a free-for-all zone known as Bash and the fully sponsor endorsed Millennium City Ultimate Tournament of Champions -- where players can queue up and go into combat alone or in a group of five friends.According to Cryptic, the ultimate goal is to have PvP available to players no matter where they are in the game world. We're just wondering if this will be enough for people who do want PvP and if those who don't care will bother all too much with the system. Hopefully it all works out come September.
Champions Online dated for release on July 14th
During an event in the UK today, Cryptic's Bill Roper revealed that Champions Online will officially launch on July 14th 2009 in both the United State and Europe. The launch date, while a tiny bit further than expected, is probably for the better since Jumgpate Evolution is releasing in the middle of June anyhow. If both of these games hit in the same month, we'd probably lose our minds.Finally having a definitive release date is incredibly exciting and means we can now commence the tailoring of our superhero costume that we'll wear on launch day in order to celebrate. Of course, you won't be seeing that because well let's face it, we're going to be staying home waiting for Champions Online in the mail, dressed like the No Pants Man.Keep your eyes sharp, as we're sure there'll be additional information from this event sometime soon.
Robot mania continues with Champions Online's latest screenshots
This time last year we'd consider selling a non-vital organ to get as many screenshots for Champions Online as we are nowadays, but that's just a testament to our impatience. Now we realize the folly of our kidney selling ways and can simply enjoy all these menacing robots.So that guy up there, he's very likely using a superspeed travel power. Either that, or he's practicing to audition for the upcoming remake of Flashdance -- but we're gonna go with the former.Both this shot and many of the other more recent screenshots appear to have been taken without the cel-shading effect seen in earlier images. We had heard rumblings of the option to turn the cel-shading off in the graphical options, but can now safely say that it looks to be true. Options are a good thing, and this way people who like and dislike the cel-shading approach should be happy with how their heroes look come launch day.%Gallery-17946%
Caption a Champions Online screenshot, maybe win a beta key
If you've ever seen a screen caption here on Massively (largely supplied by the bloggers who post them) then you've probably thought, "I could do better than that!" If these words have indeed passed through your noggin, then here's your chance to show us how it's done. Cryptic's got yet another contest to win Champions Online beta keys, and this time the prizes go to whomever can make with the fancy wordage.Here are some of our other thoughtful entries for the image above. Also, yes, ours is not a caption and instead a thought bubble. Maybe when Cryptic has a "submit your thought bubbles" contest we'll have a fighting chance. Until then, feel free to gaze at the two new screens that have been released for the contest. Bonus!%Gallery-17946%
First hints emerge concerning Champions Online's Omega System
In a recent interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Champions Online's lead designer Randy Mosiondz divulged some of the first specs of information about the game's previously mentioned Omega System. Apparently the end-game system is being designed with the goal of offering content for solo, small groups and large groups alike. According to Mosiondz one of the ultimate goals for players participating in end-game will be to become an "Omega", which are some of the most powerful super-powered beings within the game's universe. Do we get a silver surf board too, or how about a gold one?It all sounds pretty exciting, if a little bit vague. We can't wait to hear some more news about the system as time marches onwards. Springs isn't getting any further away so we suppose it won't kill us to be patient. Well, it could.%Gallery-17946%
Big Download taps into Champions Online
We give em' two big thumbs-up, and we hope you don't think super-hero and villain MMOs are overplayed. One very cool thing about Champions Online is that Hero Games will develop a tabletop version in tandem with the MMOG. The pen and paper ruleset will borrow heavily from the design-direction in Champions Online. You won't make any throw-away character sheets. Whatever character you play in the MMOG will be available to create and play in the pen and paper arena. But enough about the roll hacks. That's long ways down the road, and our sister site Big Download is slowing it down for those looking to catch up. Their Champions Online feature, is a retrospect that details how it all came about: In it they delve into the mastermind and find out why Jack Emmert and Cryptic Studios decided to develop the comic property. Emmert's candidness might surprise you. The feature also details the bios and back stories behind some of the caped and masked crusaders from the Champions Online Universe.
Champions creator confirms tabletop and MMO will develop simultaneously
In an interview with SuperheroFlix, Hero Games creator Steve Long talks about how the tabletop version of Champions will develop in tandem with Champions Online. Long says that while Cryptic Studios is free to do whatever they want with the IP for the MMO, future sourcebooks will expand upon what Cryptic does. In fact, two of the upcoming books will feature content exclusively created by the MMO studio. What's more, there will be crossover content between the two games going forward into the future. One wonders if this sort of -- forgive us -- synergy will influence other projects. Like, just as an example ... Star Trek Online. Let's hope so, because if there's one franchise that could use a reboot, it's that one!
Rumor: Champions Online's table-top roots confirmed
A forum post by dev team member Steve Long over on the HERO Games official forums has given us pretty convincing evidence that the recently revealed Cryptic MMO Champions Online, is in fact based on the Champions table-top roleplaying game first launched back in 1981. If true, this piece of information gives a slightly more clear view on what kind of game we can expect Champions Online to become.There's definitely some exciting possibilities with the system offered by Champions, which has arguably one of the most flexible rule set we've ever seen. We're talking custom powers here.
